But amidst this ever advancing tide of human progress, there was also the occasional researcher who spent months earnestly poring over data — only to arrive at a conclusion that unfortunately seemed kind of “no duh.”

This is still honourable work; science can’t all be dinosaur digs and Mars missions and Higgs bosons. But that doesn’t mean we can’t make fun of it.

Below, nine examples from 2016 of Canadian researchers’ most no-brainer conclusions.

Marijuana makes rats lazy The University of British Columbia, of all places, knows full well about the “slacker effect” of marijuana; the drug’s penchant to remove energy and ambition from its users. But PhD candidate Mason Silveira wanted to see if the “slacker effect” would be cancelled out if marijuana was enriched with more cannabidiol, the drug’s pain-relief ingredient. If so, the effects would have been revolutionary: pain relief without the side effect of listlessness. Unfortunately, after giving the rejigged marijuana to a bunch of rats and testing their motivation, the conclusion was that it still made them lazy.

Pulling sturgeon out of the water by their face is bad for them This Canadian-led study, published in Conservation Physiology, was looking at catch-and-release sport fishing. Specifically, the catch-and-release of white sturgeon on the Fraser River, a fishery so intense that it’s estimated that the average sturgeon is yanked out of the water by anglers about once a year. Researchers took 48 fish and subjected them to “fishing conditions” in a lab. The result? Lots of stress, and some fish death. It’s an expected result, to be sure, but it’s still something to point to for anyone trying to argue that catch-and-release isn’t consequence-free. “Just because it doesn’t die, it doesn’t mean no harm is done,” Ken Malloway, chairman of the Lower Fraser Fishing Alliance, said upon the study’s release. “How about if I torture and release you?”

Pets make people happy This survey was funded by Ontario’s Nutram Pet Products, so it’s fair to assume that they had some kind of bias as to the final result. The company surveyed 1,000 pet owners and found that 71 per cent claimed to be happier after owning a pet. The remaining 28 per cent are presumably cat owners.

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Sex education class is awkward for high school students Published in the British journal BMJ Open, this study included surveyed responses about sex education from Canadian high school students as well as their counterparts around the world. It found that students everywhere found sex education to be “cringey” and “highly embarrassing.” All is not lost, however: The researchers suggested that rather than sex ed being taught by Mr. Johnson the rugby coach, schools should bring in “experts who maintain clear boundaries with students.”

Angry drivers crash moreRage-filled maniacs are much more prone to auto collisions than their calm-driving counterparts, concluded the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in September. The results were pulled from an ongoing survey of the mental health of 12,830 Ontarians. People who calm behind the wheel reported almost no history of car crashes, while swearing, bird-flipping jerks were 78 per cent more likely to be involved in a crash. “The results clearly show that aggression is related to the risk of collision,” lead author Christine Wickens said in a statement. Now to those smug types who say this was a pointless study, consider the following: Imagine how society would have changed if we’d found out that only the calm drivers were hitting things.

People hate airline fees In another corporate-backed survey of dubious scientific motivation in July, the Canadian online travel agency Flight Network surveyed 700 people and found that 74 per cent did not care for new airline fees, such as extra costs for checked bags, meals or in-flight movies. Of the “pro-fee” crowd, 17 per cent were indifferent and nine per cent took the economics-approved argument that these fees are a great way to ensure that in-flight frills are paid for exclusively by the people who use them.

Alex Yurosevic for National Post

Higher food prices cause people to shop differently When 1,000 Canadians were asked online if their shopping habits had changed due to higher food prices, 53 per cent said yes. According to the results, released in November, this altered shopping behaviour included looking for deals or thinking about what they were going to buy before going to the store. If certain foods got too expensive, meanwhile, shoppers would try to find a less expensive alternative. The survey essentially confirmed that Canadians continue to know the basic ground rules of capitalism. Although it did contain one potentially stunning number: 24.3 per cent of Canadians said they worried about how to pay for food.

Canadians in different cities enjoy travelling to different countriesVancouverites enjoy vacationing in Hawaii, while Torontonians are more likely to fly to Florida. And Montrealers fly to French-speaking Paris. We might have been able to assume this based on the cruel laws of geography, but now we know for sure thanks to data released by the online travel booking site Kayak.com. Where you live in Canada, it turns out, effects where you like to travel.

Millennials can’t afford homes in Vancouver Released in September, and funded by the credit union Vancity, this was a survey of 409 millennials in Vancouver who were still living at home. In the land of million-dollar teardowns, it turned out that more than half of 20-to-35-year-olds living at home said they unable to afford rent or a down payment. “It is not because millennials don’t have work,” said the study. “They just can’t afford to live on their own – especially in a less-affordable region like Metro Vancouver.”